Mad Men, the Early Era
Step into the lobby of the Baker Library | Bloomberg Center and you’ll find an exhibit that coordinates well with the cool elegance of the building’s black-and-white checkerboard floor. “The High Art of Photographic Advertising” showcases some striking examples from the 1934 National Alliance of Art and Industry Exhibition that opened in the gallery of New York City’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza. On display until October 9, the exhibit, curated by Melissa Banta, can also be viewed online.
Fans of Don and Betty Draper’s suave sophistication will find much to enjoy here, even if the exhibit’s “Mad Men” were working thirty years before the AMC show and its 1960s sense of modishness. Looking at these photos is a trip into a different era, when evening gowns, cigarettes, and jaunty hats were the elements of style. An advertisement for Seagram’s whiskey could be a still from a Fred Astaire movie, with two smiling, tuxedoed men and a sleekly coiffed woman gathered around a tray table of cocktail glasses. The fantasy that a new cigarette, car, or liquor could hold the key to a happier, more fulfilling life was as much a part of the marketing equation 75 years ago as it today, even if that fantasy looks quite a bit different.
In 1935, HBS purchased half of the 250 prints featured in the exhibit (the School’s total collection of photographs now stands at a staggering 22,000 images), including works by Margaret Bourke-White, Anton Bruehl, and Russell Aikins. Three years earlier, “Advertising Problems” became the first full course of study devoted to the topic at HBS (marketing had been part of the curriculum since 1914).
What would those long-ago MBA students make of 21st-century “advertising problems” that play out on the Internet, on television, and pretty much any surface in the range of human eyeballs? The Baker exhibit photos blur the line between art and commerce. How often is that true of today’s advertising? Tell us which contemporary ads (if any) qualify as art in your mind, and why.
